Stanford's Online AI-Class; First Impressions

Monday, October 10th marked the start of ai-class.com.  A novel experiment by Stanford, this free online course attempts to teach over 150,000 people about artificial intelligence through a series of videos and quizzes.  At first I was skeptical, as I watch tons of great videos for the purpose of learning everyday, but to convey an entire college course through YouTube videos is a different story.  Although admittedly, I was presently suppressed with the first lesson.  It consisted of 13 videos ranging from 30seconds to 9minutes, each ending with a one question quiz, and the next video typically starting with the answer.  I thought the lessons were absolutely fabulous, moving slow with illustrations and step by step explanations.  If one needed extra help understanding a topic, all you have to do is use Google or Wikipedia and you are almost instantly caught up again.  My only complaint with the class thus far has been with the ability of their servers to handle the students.  Too often when I go to visit the page is it unavailable due to the sheer about of connections and work put upon their servers.  They have also been patching and updating their hardware, but this is almost an effort too late, as the classes have already started.  One has to try several times to make a successful connection to the website, and even then it is not parented you will complete your lesson.  Overall, it's a great course, although it defiantly was under prepared with handling the influx of students it received, something I thought Stanford would have anticipated and solved (they knew how many students registered before hand, they should have stress tested their servers prior to launch).  Hopefully it improves, I will be updating you in the future, but in the mean time feel free to discus the course in the comments.

Here is the beginning of Unit 2. If you aren't registered you can follow along on YouTube!

Free Learning Online!

Recently, I have found a number of amazing resources for learning online.  Academic Earth, is a fantastic website that gives awesome speech from renowned professors all over the world.  AE offers courses on all subjects in easy to digest videos, making it easy to watch, learn, and understand.  Stanford's Engineering Everywhere is also offering top notch courses in computer science and mathematics. I have personally enrolled in the AI courses, and am excited to begin watching the videos and then attempting some assignments.  You can also find a very eclectic collection of subjects and schools over at LifeHacker's Technophilia, which has everything from history to foreign languages. If video's aren't your thing, you can always check out Wikiversity, which is Wikipedia's take on open source education.  Although, Wikiversity may not have the depth of Standford's courses it certainly has the breadth, offering courses from gastronomy all the way to oncology.  But going back to the computer subjects, if you want to learn how to program there is no better place than Google Code University.  At GCU, you can learn C++, Java, Javascript, and Python!  All great languages which can help teach the concepts of computer science, such as object oriented, abstraction, and design styles.  They offer also courses on computer security, but if you really want to learn information security, I suggest the best: SecurityTube.  SecurityTube offers the best videos and lectures from professionals in the hacker field and at security conferences.  SecurityTube also offers certifications as well, so you can actually get something to show from all this e-learning.  Until next time Internet, educate yourself! We have a long, hard road ahead of us, and I want everyone on the top of their game!  We must all be well educated and critical of our world if we hope to survive and continue bettering our situation.

Watch it on Academic Earth